I made this beer way back at the end of September. About a month later I decided to let it sit on 2 oz of dry hops, hoping that would mitigate the beer's excessive roastiness. Now, after six weeks on the dry hops, it's time to pass judgment.

As an experimental beer, I learned a lot from this beer. But as a beer, it's not very good. The dry hopping didn't hurt the beer, but it couldn't overcome the flavor of the brown malt. The flavor is still too dry, roasty and astringent. It's a flavor that can euphemistically be described as interesting -- it's not bad enough for me to throw out the beer, but it's not good enough that I'm excited about drinking it.

As with all of my beers I want to figure out what I can do to make the beer better. In terms of process there's not much to work on here -- the beer is well made, has a nice head and lacing, is infection free, etc. The problem here is purely recipe. If I make another beer with such a high amount of brown malt, I need to figure out a way to mitigate the roast flavor. One way to do that would be to up the percentage of crystal malt, but I'm not a fan of beers with heavy crystal flavor, so I probably won't do that.

One idea I'm toying with is to decrease the brown malt slightly and add in some honey malt and golden naked oats to make a recipe I'm calling Honey Nut Beerios. The flavors of the new grains should match well with the nuttiness of the brown malt. And decreasing the brown malt should control the roast flavor.